For God’s Sake, Can’t We Say Goodbye?

Am I the only one that finds this whole Michael Jackson business creepy?
What else, maybe a tad more important is happening?
How’s that stimulus coming along?
“The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an outside adviser to President Barack Obama.”
Could man-made disasters be in our future?
“Last week, German authorities discovered that groups of terrorists may have been dispatched from training bases in Pakistan to launch crippling attacks.”
I feel safe that we are speaking with one voice in our support of Israel.
“Israel has a sovereign right to decide what is in its best interest in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions whether the United States agrees or not, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview on Sunday.”
“US President Barack Obama on Tuesday strongly denied that the United States had given Israel an approval to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Asked by CNN whether Washington had given Israel a green light for such an attack, Obama answered: ‘Absolutely not.’”
I left the house when the Michael Jackson funeral started. It is now 2:45 and Brooke Shields is bemoaning the loss of her buddy.
Look, I liked Jackson’s music. I thought “Black and White” was the last good thing he did, though. When was that… early ‘90s?
Then the child stuff started. I thought that the whole Neverland thing was just grotesque. The final straw was the interview in which he thought sleeping naked with a pre-pubescent boy was perfectly natural.
Yet the world doesn’t share my disdain. Indeed better folks than I, including Larry King and Wesley Snipes (is he out already?) are among dozens of B-list celebrities basking in the light of the gold casket behind them, their slide toward obscurity halted by the worldwide exposure of this funeral.
I don’t know. The King of Pop with all of his extreme weirdness is being canonized while our soldiers die for our freedom, children die for incomprehensible reasons.
Michael Jackson was tortured. God rest his soul.
The whole world is enthralled by the funeral of a man with a totally tragic life. At three hours later, Sheila Jackson Lee is preaching.
Michael had a remarkable life. He died young. It’s heartrending. In the end, though, he was a talented, twisted man. He might be worthy of adoration, but not four hours of non-stop coverage on every “news” channel.
It all boils down to the Onion headline in October of 2001: “A Mournful Nation Yearns to Care about Useless Bull…, Again.”
At a time when “…a minimum of 12 al-Qaida operatives who were trained in the tribal region of Pakistan have left the training camps and are headed back to their home countries. Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Egypt are just some of those countries,” Geraldo just told us we just can’t say goodbye to the King of Pop.
Well, let’s give it a try. So Long, Farewell, auf Weidersen, Good-Bye.

Only Dead Fish Go With the Flow

Well, first things first. My friend Elizabeth wrote the first piece on Sarah Palin.
One thing I noticed when Governor Palin resigned on Friday was that she spoke not of the Republican Party, but her philosophy.
In an interview in this week’s Time Magazine she stated, “President Obama is growing government outrageously, and it’s immoral and it’s uneconomic, his plan that he tries to sell America. His plan to “put America on the right track” economically, incurring the debt that our nation is incurring, trillions of dollars that we’re passing on to our kids, expecting them to pay off for us, is immoral and doesn’t even make economic sense. So, his growth of government agenda needs to be ratcheted back, and it’s going to take good people who have the guts to stand up to him, stand up to him and debate policy, not personalities, not partisan politics, but policy to effect the change that we need there. And allow free enterprise and the industrious Americans who run our small businesses and want to raise a family, allowing our families to grow and prosper and thrive, Americans who still believe in those ideals to get in there and effect change. I want to work for people who believe in that.”
Did you see a thing about the Republican Party?
I think that the Republican Party is a morally bankrupt institution that no longer responsive to the people it claims to represent. I think that’s one reason for the defeat last November. I did not vote for John McCain, I voted for Sarah.
I don’t think the Alaskan governor has her sights on the Presidency in 2010. I think what you are going to see is a new party. The Republicans have become a caricature. They talk a good game, but they seem to be just going through the motions.
There are some in Congress standing up to the insanity gripping our nation, Bohner for one, but so many are proposing Democrat Lite.
I think what Mrs. Palin is doing is birthing a new party.
By no longer being a Republican, she takes the partisanship out of the equation. People think the folks at the tea parties are right-wing nuts, but they are not. They are folks who are scared at the trajectory this country is on.
If Sarah Palin can change that, then I don’t care if she’s an Atlantean or an Amazon. Someone has to grab the spotlight and shout for all they are worth.
If resigning from her position in Alaska accomplishes this, so be it. Stay tuned.

Elizabeth: Say it ain’t so, Sarah!

Just when I finally got that insipid voice out of my head, here she comes again…Sarah Palin resigning from her role as Governor. Now, it would be okay if she were leaving the whole world of politics behind her to join the family fishery business, but I don’t think we’re going to get off that easily. She has claimed her stepping aside is because she doesn’t want to, “accept that lame duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck and ‘milk it’” as, she says, some governors do.

Palin believes that she can still be an effective agent of change for the state saying, “I nor anyone else needs a title to do this—to make a difference…to help people.”

I agree that any one of us may make a difference, but wouldn’t the ability to easily reach (and influence) many thousands of people make it just a little bit more effective in the end?

I’m not buying it, Sarah. If things are going so well in your great state, if you have engendered so much progress, then wouldn’t it be considerably more disruptive to pass the baton mid-race than to complete your term? By stepping down, Ms. Palin believes she is battling one of the problems in our country: apathy. “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and go with the flow. Nah, only dead fish ‘go with the flow,’” she says.

Oh, wonderful, we have a new ‘Palin-ism’ involving dead fish (maybe a fish good ol’ ‘Joe Six Pack’ threw back after the ‘lipstick was put on the pit bull.’)

It scares me to think this resignation is an indication that Palin is on to bigger and better things—like the Presidential race in 2012. She didn’t say as much in her public address, but on her Twitter account, the truth seemed to peek out. She apparently Twittered to the effect that, “she would take on a larger, national role, citing a ‘higher calling’ to unite the country along conservative lines” according to the Associated Press.

The Associated Press also reports that Palin has “laid the groundwork for a possible presidential run, establishing a political action committee.”

Oh, the horror. Does this mean we will be subjected to the torture of more interviews like the train wreck with Katie Couric? Remember, if you will, when Couric asked Palin what periodicals she read to stay informed and the answer was, “I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.”

When asked what specific titles, “Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.”

And finally if she could name any of them, “I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where, it’s kind of suggested and it seems like, ‘Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C. may be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska?’ Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.” Huh?

I understand that she may have been nervous or felt ‘taken aback’ by the questions, but in the end, Palin blamed her ‘media coach,’ former CBS news analyst Nicolle Wallace for her floundering responses. This was just the tip of the iceburg. Her superficial knowledge of foreign policy was frightening. It began to appear that unless she had been specifically coached on an issue, the resulting response would be a rambling diatribe of nonsense. This was hard enough to swallow coming from a Vice Presidential candidate—she couldn’t possibly be considering trying out for Commander in Chief. Could she?

A book deal has been signed so, perhaps, the extra time off will be devoted to the writing of her memoir. A girl can hope. I mean, I would love to watch more Tina Fey renditions of Palin, but I’m not sure I could stand four years of it.